It is important for pilots to comprehend an issued ground clearance when taxiing. Navigation of an airport surface (taxiways/runways) can be as difficult (from a pilot's workload perspective) as the airborne portion of the flight, especially in limited visibility of night and/or weather, or at unfamiliar airports. An increase in pilot workload typically results in an increase in cognitive errors and a decreased attention span: the pilot must interpret and integrate the information provided from several sources occupying his thought processes when he may have many other decisions to make. Some unlikely, yet postulated results, include taxiing onto unapproved taxiways/runways and becoming disorientated while taxiing.
Taxi instructions, also referred to as a taxi clearance, provide a specific route (i.e., a sequence of taxiways, runways, or segments thereof) which an aircraft (or another vehicle) should follow when traversing between locations on the ground (e.g., between terminals, hangars and/or runways) to avoid confusion and/or runway incursions or to otherwise maintain safe and organized ground traffic flow. Taxi instructions are typically received by a pilot from an air traffic controller immediately prior to taxiing the aircraft, for example, from a terminal and/or hangar to a runway for departure, from a runway to a terminal and/or hangar after landing, or to otherwise taxi the aircraft clear of a runway.
Traditionally, after receiving taxi instructions at an airport, the pilot would manually record the taxi instructions (e.g., by writing them down on a piece of paper) and then utilize a paper chart corresponding to that airport to navigate the aircraft about the airport in accordance with the received taxi instructions. This undesirably increases a pilot's workload and distracts the pilot's focus and/or attention on operating the aircraft, and thus, degrades the pilot's situational awareness. Additionally, larger airports typically have a large number of taxiways, runways, terminals and/or hangars, potentially resulting in more complex taxi instructions, which in combination with an increasing amount of ground traffic (which also increases the likelihood of runway incursions), further increases the demand on a pilot.
Modern electronic systems have been adapted to allow the pilot to input the taxi instructions for presentation on an onboard display device. A system developed by Honeywell, the assignee of the inventions disclosed herein, allows the pilot to enter these clearances into a system that then auto-generates the short path (auto-pathing system) distance to the instructed destination. This known system provides a very quick mechanism to generate a taxi clearance.
As terminal area operations increase in volume, complexity, and required execution precision, pilots need to understand ground (taxi) clearances issued by ground control. Clearances may be represented in text via data link such as “taxi to 3-4 left on A10 via Alpha Bravo, stop and hold short of 1-1”. This presents the clearance but neither indicates the current progress of the aircraft through the clearance nor is it amenable to an intuitive representation to indicate the limits of the clearance. While next generation Airport Moving Maps (AMM) provide a spatial representation of a taxi clearance, the details of the clearance can be lost in the graphical rendering, especially if an attempt is made to glean awareness from the AMM at a glance. AMMs are an overlay, for example, on a multi-function display/integrated navigation display (MFD/INAV), where airport features like runways, taxiways, and aprons, are shown on the display.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a method and system displaying ground clearance instructions to the aircrew of an aircraft on the ground in an airport environment with the ability to modify the display of the ground clearance instructions generated by the auto-pathing system. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the exemplary embodiments will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.